Do Members of Racial Minority Groups Have an Affinity With Serious Crime?
The overrepresentation of Blacks and Latinos in the arrest statistics is no longer a new finding but whether this trend is due to selective law enforcement or differential involvement in crime needs a more forceful and empirically grounded attention than has so far been proffered. Using data from a large mid-western police department, the total count of 11,293 arrests conducted from January through December 2005 were examined. A higher arrest rate was affirmed for Blacks and Latinos. In addition, the data provided considerable support for existence of zeal in discretional arrest for Blacks and Latinos but only a remote possibility of differential involvement in criminal behavior for the two racial minority groups.
